posted at 8:01 am on May 14, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

The story told by Lois Lerner in Friday’s IRS apology continues to fall apart faster than Al Capone’s audit defense. Last night, the Washington Post revealed that the effort to target opponents of the Obama administration was not limited to just one office in Cincinnati, but encompassed three other offices as well — one of which was IRS headquarters in Washington DC.

How convenient:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.

The search terms turned out to be even more broad than first thought. Guess what another one was? “Voter fraud,” apparently:

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

The Post also catches up with the who-knew-what-and-when of the story:

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.

Let’s raise a red flag on the Shulman claim. It’s very convenient for Shulman to claim now that he was briefed in May 2012, because he testified twice in March 2012 that nothing of this sort was happening at the IRS. However, the IRS chief counsel — the top attorney in the organization — was informed in August 2011 of this targeting. Just how likely would it have been that Shulman’s chief lawyer would have failed to mention this for nine months, and waited to brief him on it until Shulman was almost out the door? I’d call that extremely unlikely, and even putting that aside, it still leaves the question of why Shulman never bothered to let anyone know about it, even as a private citizen.

Clearly, this strategy was no isolated incident. Four separate offices spread far across the country worked to put this targeting in place against the political opponents of the White House. That alone smacks of higher-level coordination, at either the IRS Commissioner level or above. The fact that it took place in the IRS’ Washington headquarters also shows that it was no rogue effort that ran wild due to lack of supervision. This was purposeful.

Cui bono? To whose benefit was this done? The buck stops at the White House — because that’s where the benefits of political harassment would start.

Blowback

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Considering that my writing, teaching, and public social media presence all have to do with opposing various vectors of racism through historicization, I’m not sure how you could claim that I’m cowardly. But sometimes I like to act out in less professional ways. So I come here. Newsflash, every single person here posts for the same reasons. The anonymity offers the opportunity to act out in ways they feel they can not in public forums. Attacking me for cowardice is attacking the very premise of this forum….

Agreed. If it was President Robert Byrd instead of Dog Eater we would all be onboard with having the IRS being used as a personal intimidation force against us.

Robert Byrd would never target white tea party groups….nor would Byrd ever get elected in a state not named West. Virginia. Remind me. How did that majority Dem state vote in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections?

You can disavow, deflect and disown all you want. The fact of the matter is that while this is just a game and fun and debate for most everyone else, for you it clearly means something more. Something I said or did really got under your skin. You actually cared enough to track me down. Call it amazement, anger, disbelief, whatever, I struck a nerve. And boo, that’s a sad sign for you. I come and go off this forum, I post more frequently at times, less frequently at times, whatever. I’m not pressed. But you? Are steam pressed like last week’s dry cleaning about me. And its just sort of sad.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:11 AM

Yawn, keep projecting homeboy. I wouldn’t pizz on you if your hair was on fire…that’s how little I care about you. I took 3 minutes scooter..to realize what a fool you were and where you were “coming” from. Strike a nerve? LOL. Again, phucktard..you seem to have reading comprehension issues…and your internet psychoanalysis is falling pretty flat.

And I don’t really give a chit about your level of pressing or your frequency of posting. So GFY drama queen.

Nah boo. When people can’t respond to those moments where I bring out the racial hypocrisy of the conservative movement they accuse me of “playing the race card.” But, with some rare exceptions, folks are actually rarely ever to substantively deal.

Hope you’re opposing Wilson Goode’s racism, since his bombing of MOVE was your example of government oppression.

Wethal on May 14, 2013 at 10:28 AM

Black mayors in the 80s? Yes, they are guilty of some pretty horrific anti-black governance. This is not a threatening notion for me. It only speaks to how endemic anti-blackness is to the structure of the state that even black folks appropriated into the state become participants.

Robert Byrd would never target white tea party groups….nor would Byrd ever get elected in a state not named West. Virginia. Remind me. How did that majority Dem state vote in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections?

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:20 AM

You don’t know what he would have done but it doesn’t matter if a POTUS Byrd would target TP’ers, whomever he targeted in any way would be fine with conservatives because he’s white and apparently that’s all we care about. I mean look at whitey Bill Clinton, we just loved him and lined up like lemmings behind the guy.

25 years ago yesterday, the government targeted a black political organization….with a bunker bomb killing 11 people including five children and burning down 65 homes. No one involved in the bombing was ever prosecuted. So excuse me if this IRS questionnaire doesn’t quite register.

Considering that my writing, teaching, and public social media presence all have to do with opposing various vectors of racism through historicization, I’m not sure how you could claim that I’m cowardly. But sometimes I like to act out in less professional ways. So I come here. Newsflash, every single person here posts for the same reasons. The anonymity offers the opportunity to act out in ways they feel they can not in public forums. Attacking me for cowardice is attacking the very premise of this forum….

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:16 AM

.
I won’t call you a coward.

I will criticize you (and all other liberal apologists) for abusing the cry of “racism”.

Lord…help them. It is important to know what you’re good at. And you, my most precious, are no good at appropriating black gay vernacular or attempting to throw shade. Please do not come for me, unless I send you. What is amusing is that while the Obama Administration (or as I like to think of it, Bush III) had already sealed its fate as part of the 3 decade neoliberal project, your vision of a Christian-tastic nation is headed to the same historical junkheap as the 8 track, jerry curl and viable GOP presidential candidates. Millenials are, by far, more progressive than Gen Y or X,. They’ve been clued into the lie of religious authority and the deception that there is no class in American society. Without those things, conservatism is dead in the water. Its all just a matter of time.

It only speaks to how endemic anti-blackness is to the structure of the state that even black folks appropriated into the state become participants.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:31 AM

And finally it arrives, a brother complaining that other brothers are too dumb to “free” themselves from the shackles of never-ending racism. The only thing missing is one of the favorite lefty terms for such people like Oreo, House Negr0, or Uncle Tom.

So when a black mayor orders the police to drop a bomb on a black activist group in a black neighborhood it’s because he was co-opted by Big Whitey.

Hey Brainfreeordie, the walls are coming down on your gods, Chicago Jesus and Cankles. It’s so goddamn delicious!!!! My kitchen pots and pans are all warmed up for when they finally get what they deserve. And you will hear me banging them on that glorious day. My neighbors will call the looney bin, but it’s been 5 years coming!

Millenials are, by far, more progressive than Gen Y or X,. They’ve been clued into the lie of religious authority and the deception that there is no class in American society. Without those things, conservatism is dead in the water. Its all just a matter of time.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:36 AM

Yes, and the unemployment rate for Millenials is over 20%.

Oh and how they love having their latest smart phones being given to the poor.

One generation put a man on the Moon, while another creates another useless app.

Ask any tea party member and you will probably find that they did it to everyone. It was an unspoken policy. It was government policy to attack the tea party in every single agency, but mostly in Congress. It started almost immediately with Janet Napolitano when she decided the day before(Apr 14, 2009) the first Tax Day Rally to attack veterans for possibly being domestic terrorists. I wonder where she got that idea? That silliness doesn’t show up in a real American’s thinking. Only someone that hates the military. Hmmmmmm. That would be most Democrats.

Millenials are, by far, more progressive than Gen Y or X,. They’ve been clued into the lie of religious authority and the deception that there is no class in American society. Without those things, conservatism is dead in the water. Its all just a matter of time.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:36 AM

.
WHO ……. is promoting the deception that there is no class in American society ?

1. He (Nixon) has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavoured to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be intitiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

I didn’t say anything about “whitey” I am talking about anti-blackness. But its too complex a concept to introduce here, folks need to read their Gramsci first.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:45 AM

Oooo…uhhh….yeah, about that:

A questionnaire?!? Heavens to murgatroid snaggle puss! Whatever shall we do!! White privilege is hilarious. The victims of stop n frisk, the MOVE bombing, and COINTELPRO are laughing their ass off. At least those of them who the government hasn’t killed.

I didn’t say anything about “whitey” I am talking about anti-blackness. But its too complex a concept to introduce here, folks need to read their Gramsci first.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:45 AM

Why, yes, of course, because Gramsci just goes on and on about anti-blackness in his tedious and in-dire-need-of-editing Prison Notebooks, a text that graduate students who will never get jobs like to carry around but never really read.

Wait. No, Gramsci never mentions “anti-blackness.” Did you know that the Italian Communists were quite OK with Italy’s adventures in Ethiopia?

Modern conservatism is their new term, just as they changed “liberal” to “progressive” when the former became a bit too nasty for them. Same old tired fascism, snappy new title, and no one noticed; they’re pretty smart those lib..er..progressives.

I suspect that the IRS officials driving this didn’t come up with the lists themselves, they were fed targets from advocacy groups, probably the ones run by the democratics’ favorite Nazi stooge George Soros.

That’s what they do.

Follow the leak of Governor Romney’s IRS information to Dingy Harry. That’s by far the most serious breach here, it was a conspiracy designed to affect a presidential election and it surely did.

Someone that libs trot out to prove to everyone how intellectual and deep-thinking they are, similar to flopping out Marx and Niebuhr at opportune times. It’s all drier than week-old toast but boy do they get points with other leftists for using them.

.
Modern conservatism is their new term, just as they changed “liberal” to “progressive” when the former listens2glenn on May 14, 2013 at 10:56 AM

Modern conservatism is their new term, just as they changed “liberal” to “progressive” when the former became a bit too nasty for them. Same old tired fascism, snappy new title, and no one noticed; they’re pretty smart those lib..er..progressives.

Bishop on May 14, 2013 at 10:58 AM Same old tired fascism, snappy new title, and no one noticed; they’re pretty smart those lib..er..progressives.

Bishop on May 14, 2013 at 10:58 AM

.
Way back when, the term ‘progressive’ was changed to ‘liberal’ because “the former became a bit too nasty for them.”

It only speaks to how endemic anti-blackness is to the structure of the state that even black folks appropriated into the state become participants.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 10:31 AM

And finally it arrives, a brother complaining that other brothers are too dumb to “free” themselves from the shackles of never-ending racism. The only thing missing is one of the favorite lefty terms for such people like Oreo, House Negr0, or Uncle Tom.

So when a black mayor orders the police to drop a bomb on a black activist group in a black neighborhood it’s because he was co-opted by Big Whitey.

O_o

Bishop on May 14, 2013 at 10:36 AM

Just a correction for Historical purposes….

Ramona Africa, and the Move Cult were not a blacK activist
group….Hell, the Authorities down there and their Neighbors
did not even consider them HUMANS.

Wilson Goode was under intense pressure to Remove them from
that neighborhood, which was roughly 85% black. Yes
to all those “enlightened” Leftists out there, the Black
neighbors in Philly wanted other “Miscreants’ removed
from their neighborhood..they considered them a Blight.

.
Someone that libs trot out to prove to everyone how intellectual and deep-thinking they are, similar to flopping out Marx and Niebuhr at opportune times. It’s all drier than week-old toast but boy do they get points with other leftists for using them.

I wonder…. did libfree get his panties in a twist when Herman Cain was being harassed and oppressed by THE MAN, in the form of all those icky MSM reporters abusing their white privilege to hammer Cain on his shortcomings?

Did he cheer the Cain boomlet amongst the populace here at Hotair last year, because those evil racist Republicans were –gasp!– promoting someone of color?

Or is libfree one of those tired people who think the only true black is a marxist black who is never responsible for his or her own actions and everyone owes said black person everything?

It’s a silly question, right? Because being a TrueBlack™ means never, ever, EVER having any sort of personal responsibility. And if you argue otherwise, you are an Uncle Tom/embracing the inner slave or something.

25 years ago yesterday, the government targeted a black political organization….with a bunker bomb killing 11 people including five children and burning down 65 homes.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 8:33 AM

Waco had a much higher death toll. No one was prosecuted for that either. There is one other similarity – the individuals responsible for ordering the operations in question (Mayor Wilson Goode in Philadelphia and Bill Clinton/Janet Reno in the case of Waco) were DEMOCRATS.

Not only that, Wilson Goode was African-American, and was elected with the political support of his community. Bill Clinton had the support of the overwhelming support of the African-American electorate, and was even dubbed “the first Black president”. So, we have two massacres ordered by politicians supported by the African-American community.

I bet you thought that you were being clever by using the MOVE incident as an example of “racism”, but I bet you never thought you would be clobbered with it.

Back at you, perfesser. You ought to remember that old saying about he who lives in a glass house should not throw rocks.

I suspect that the IRS officials driving this didn’t come up with the lists themselves, they were fed targets from advocacy groups, probably the ones run by the democratics’ favorite Nazi stooge George Soros.

slickwillie2001 on May 14, 2013 at 11:02 AM

Someone in Dear Leader’s admin almost certainly told someone in power in the IRS to make sure the IRS takes a close look at all of the new tax-exempt organizations that started forming after Comrade O was elected and opposition to Obamacare began to solidify.

Gramsci called for Marxists to actively spread their ideology in a gradual, incremental, stealth manner, by infiltrating all existing societal institutions and embedding it, largely without being noticed, in the popular mind. This, he emphasized, was to be an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, process that, over a period of decades, would cause an ever-increasing number of people to embrace Marxist thought, until at last it achieved hegemony. Gramsci described this approach as a “long march through the institutions.” Among the key institutions that would need to be infiltrated were the cinema and theater, the schools and universities, the seminaries and churches, the media, the courts, the labor unions, and at least one major political party. According to Gramsci, these institutions constituted society’s “superstructure,” which, if captured and reshaped by Marxists, could lead the masses to abandon capitalism of their own volition, entirely without resistance or objection.

I believe now would be a very good time for the internet press to start looking for answers about that helicopter that contained 16 members of SEAL Team Six which was brought down several weeks after the Bin Laden hit. There’s something very, very fishy about that one. The families are asking. I’ve looked this one up and very, very few are on top of it. Finally, the families appeared on Fox and Friends last week. But nothing at all on Drudge. Like Benghazi this crash and the Fort Hood issues can’t sink into oblivion.

And I’m still waiting for the names of the Penagon brass who said Major Hassan’s terror attack was “workplace violence”. Something is very strange at the top echelons of the Pentagon. I was absolutely amazed that Leon Paneta told us we never send in the military unless we know the outcome will be positive (tell that to the Marines at Guadalcanal) and that there were no military prepared to scramble on 9-11-12. If the military is that unprepared in the middle of a tinderbox, someone needs to be court marshalled.

Gramsci is the primer for understanding how hegemony works, such that we can move beyond critiquing individual subjects like “whitey”

Apparently you don’t know what “individual subject” means, undergraduate guy. ‘Whitey’ was a pejorative instance of synecdoche (part for whole, whiteness for the whole person) that signified an entire class. It’s also the artefact of an era; some here use it but only in an ironic sense to spoof attitudes like, say, yours. An individual subject would be, you know, a person or something. Your professors are failing you, vector-historicism guy.

This is why, if Fascism comes to America, it will come from the LEFT. Because leftists can always justify any injustice they perform by saying “….remember what happened 150 years ago

It came from the left the last freakin’ time. On the other hand, who cares?–collectivism is collectivism, and whether right left or centre, it fails, it will always fail, and it will always take a whole lot of good people with it straight to hell. And whether someone from the right, left, or centre demands it, we should resist them.

And apparently you’re unfamiliar with concepts of identification. So, for example, even though I never said anything about “whitey” posters here brought up that figure because they identified with my critique of anti-black racism and transformed it into a personal critique of a figure they identify with “whitey.” So in order to get us away from the pointless politics of identification, Gramsci gets us thinking about social, political and affective structure, which is where any conversation of anti-blackness must being.

So, for example, even though I never said anything about “whitey” posters here brought up that figure because they identified with my critique of anti-black racism and transformed it into a personal critique of a figure they identify with “whitey.”

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 11:48 AM

A questionnaire?!? Heavens to murgatroid snaggle puss! Whatever shall we do!! White privilege is hilarious. The victims of stop n frisk, the MOVE bombing, and COINTELPRO are laughing their ass off. At least those of them who the government hasn’t killed.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 8:25 AM

From the Dog Eater School of Ambiguity. Libfree took classes with Jay Carney.

And apparently you’re unfamiliar with concepts of identification. So, for example, even though I never said anything about “whitey” posters here brought up that figure because they identified with my critique of anti-black racism and transformed it into a personal critique of a figure they identify with “whitey.” So in order to get us away from the pointless politics of identification, Gramsci gets us thinking about social, political and affective structure, which is where any conversation of anti-blackness must being.

This is just dumb. Since Marxist invented the very notion of conceptual economic theory you’re a marxist too. Hayek (though now discredited) is merely a revising of Keynes who is a revision of Mill who is a revision of Marx. I think you are trying to call me a “communist” which is false.

From the Dog Eater School of Ambiguity. Libfree took classes with Jay Carney.

Bishop on May 14, 2013 at 11:53 AM

White privilege is by definition not a person. I.e. it is not “whitey.” The fact that you can not understand the distinction because you personally identify with anything that has the word “white” in it, is precisely the point. And the right accuses the left of playing identity politics, oy.

So, for example, even though I never said anything about “whitey” posters here brought up that figure because they identified with my critique of anti-black racism and transformed it into a personal critique of a figure they identify with “whitey.”

No, they were being ironic, as I said, and ‘critique’ is overwrought, don’t you think, humanities guy? They were calling you names, which is what a goof like you deserves, and apparently you got your nose all pushed out of joint because of it.

So in order to get us away from the pointless politics of identification, Gramsci gets us thinking about social, political and affective structure, which is where any conversation of anti-blackness must being.

No, actually, that was never Gramsci’s project though I enjoy how you can project your own thoughts and views on those of another so easily and uncritically. Gramsci was interested in the civilizing activity of civil society–the layer of society between government and business, those layers that can coerce us–the dense networks of voluntary institutions like churches, mosques, or synagogues, the boy-scouts, bowling leagues etc. He perhaps rightly surmised that a lot of people’s values were shaped by what he referred to as these “hegemonic” institutions. But ill-educated goof-balls like yourself tend to turn Gramsci upside down by identifying hegemony with power and conspiracy etc. These would be the owning classes in Gramsci’s account. Go back and read your Gramsci, goofball.

One interesting thing that Gramsci predicted were knowledge workers. He got one thing right.

White privilege is by definition not a person. I.e. it is not “whitey.” The fact that you can not understand the distinction because you personally identify with anything that has the word “white” in it, is precisely the point. And the right accuses the left of playing identity politics, oy.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 11:56 AM

I see. You’re blaming white privilege but not white people who one could assume created all that white privilege.

The state targeted MOVE and Dr. King and the NAACP, CORE, SNCC and the SCLC because they critiqued institutional oppression.

libfreeordie on May 14, 2013 at 8:49 AM

As has been pointed out to you numerous times (and you actually blamed the actions of the black people in charge of Philly on white people), every one of these “crimes against black humanity” was perpetrated by other black people and/or other leftists.

By your own logic, and stated reason for existence, the last thing you should be is a leftist.

If you really didn’t make this connection, I can only assume it’s because you’re intensly stupid.

This should send shivers though every American. The most powerful federal agency involving itself in the politics of American citizens with distinct bias.

The sad but brutally honest truth is as long as the mega-partisan, self/party-serving, criminals in Washington continue to dole out the Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare, Food Stamps, Obamacare, Obamaphones, etc the voting majority of Americans won’t give a d@mn!